May 10 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. lost a bid to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Jefferson County, Alabama, that claims the bank enticed it into a risky refinancing of about $3 billion of sewer debt by making $8 million in payments to friends of county officials.

Circuit Judge Caryl Penney Privett in Birmingham rejected the New York-based bank’s arguments that the county is barred by the statue of limitations, a time limit for bringing action, and its contention that the county failed to show that JPMorgan was involved in a conspiracy, in a ruling issued May 7.

Jefferson County, in the suit filed in November, alleged fraud, conspiracy and “unjust enrichment against those who have brought the county and its citizens to the brink of financial disaster while lining their own pockets.”

JPMorgan, the second-biggest U.S. bank by assets, advised the state’s most populous county in 2002 and 2003 to enter into a series of floating-rate bond and interest-rate swaps that created an “inherently flawed financial structure that imploded within just a few years,” according to the county’s complaint.

Brian Marchiony, a JPMorgan spokesman, declined to comment today.

Charles LeCroy and Douglas MacFaddin, also named in the suit, were the managing directors at New York-based JPMorgan who oversaw the sewer-debt transactions. LeCroy and MacFaddin are accused of arranging $8.2 million in illegal payments to local broker-dealers who were friends of county commissioners, in exchange for the county’s business.
Larry Langford, former mayor of Birmingham and president of the county commission at the time of the debt refinancing, is serving a 15-year sentence in a federal prison in Kentucky for accepting $241,000 in bribes from William Blount, of Montgomery investment firm Blount Parrish & Co. Blount was paid $2.8 million by JPMorgan during the bond transactions.

Bankruptcy Brink

Jefferson County, home to Birmingham, has teetered on the brink of bankruptcy after interest rates on $3.2 billion in bonds soared in 2008, when companies that insured them lost their credit ratings because of losses on unrelated mortgage- backed securities.

In November, JPMorgan agreed to a $722 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to end a probe into derivative sales to the county.

The bank paid $50 million outright to the county, and agreed to cancel $647 million in fees the county faced to unwind the transactions. JPMorgan, which also paid $25 million to be placed in a fund to compensate affected investors, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

Nice!
Hopefully the court won't dismiss Americans claims that Quatlosers enticed them into slavery via the misapplication of Federal Income Tax statutes.

That every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor, is generally admitted; and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits, and appropriate them against his will, seems to be the necessary result of this admission.
The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 120 (1825)

Slavery, then, has its origin in force; but as the world has agreed that it is a legitimate result of force, the state of things which is thus produced by general consent, cannot be pronounced unlawful.
The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66 (1825)

One out of context snippet deserves another !

“Where there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.” — Plato

Harvester wrote:Very well then. That settles it. Slavery & the misapplication of tax law has its origin in force ... and cannot be pronounced unlawful !

Harvey -- you really ought not to try legal analysis if you're not equipped to do it... or is it that you're just a smartass?

"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." -- Pastor Ray Mummert, Dover, PA, during an attempt to introduce creationism -- er, "intelligent design", into the Dover Public Schools